Thursday, March 4, 2010

Feline Reflections

It occurred to me the other day that cats are not very politically correct, far from it in fact. I base this insight on observations I made of our three feline pets. If you were to ascribe to me almost preternatural perspicacity and dagger-like intellectual prowess for arriving at such an analysis, then, well, so be it. Let me now buttress my case with some particulars.

We recently got an orange tabby, Xirk, and our other cats are finding it difficult accepting him into the family. Cats can be so intolerant of one another. They’re territorial, xenophobic, mean-spirited, and cunning. We could extrapolate from these evils that they’d probably dispute the science behind global warming and oppose same-sex marriage if they had a dog in those fights. Frankly, I’m tired of their insouciant attitude and that haughty, supercilious cat-look. And who are they to look at me so and make me feel like the most asinine philistine this side of the Mississippi? After all, I have actually witnessed them orally cleansing their rectal region, thereby relinquishing even a semblance of decorum that I trust does not tarnish the recreational activities of our canine friends. It’s been a while since I’ve had a dog, so I don’t know for sure. Such indecent feline activity is captured, by the way, in the movie, “Shrek II.”

Cats are sadistic creatures that enjoy torturing and cruelly playing with their prey long before the final blow. How often the horrific squeaks of half-mutilated bunnies have awoken me at night! I know that our youngest cat, Kaspar, is just out having some fun like a reincarnated, transmigrated Gilles de Rais or Elizabeth Báthory. I went to my basement and ransacked tomes on serial killers and depraved despots I had shelved next to my books on Satan and variously shaped bottles of Jack Daniel’s No. 7. I thought there’d be at least one cat in them. Nothing. I remember watching a Disney move that depicted cats taking over ancient Egypt and still conspiring to take over the world. (By the way, I only mention these films because I think it’s important to cite one’s sources and demonstrate that research went into these observations; I’m not just pulling this stuff from my arse. In addition to documentaries, I’ve also based my analysis on pertinent literature such as Wikipedia, The Onion, and the like.) I had heard once about a Meow Zedong whose megalomaniac pursuit of a communist utopia caused famines and the suffering of millions of people; however, I later learned that no cats were actually involved in this atrocity. Perhaps I was thinking of the grey tabbies we’ve owned throughout the years who like a succession of Ottoman sultans exhibited a penchant for fratricide.

Anyway, I figured that my furry friends could at any time start clawing each other. But beyond this Battle Royale going on in my trousers—a congenital condition for which I take medication—I also worried that my cats would come to blows in what I’ll refer to as a “cat fight,” except in this instance it‘s not about bikini-clad women pulling hair and going at it with their nails, but real felines fighting one another.